


Drabble - Breathless

by kittymsmith



Category: Apex Legends (Video Games)
Genre: Backstory, Based on a Tumblr Post, Gen, Humor, Scars, i watched the trailer like everyone else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:02:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23452924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kittymsmith/pseuds/kittymsmith
Summary: Elliot decides to dance with Bloodhound during a game, with an unintentional side effect.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	Drabble - Breathless

**Author's Note:**

> I also have a tumblr @kittymsmithwritesstuff
> 
> Short, fun. I've watched the Outlands video 7 times.

Elliot was twirling and chattering to Ajay about the ballet classes his mother had enrolled him in from a young age. “It’s why my toes look dumb.”

“I thought they were just like that,” she said. Bloodhound was behind them slightly, the trio forming an off-kilter triangle as they went through the purple flowers outside Lookout Mountain.

“Nope, I really wanted to do point-and dudes normally don’t do point, cause physically it’s a _lot_ harder-but anyway I did it and it made my toes look funny. But hey, I can dance!” He did a double twirl for emphasis, landing with his arm outstretched to Bloodhound. “Me they’dy.”

They snorted, but humored him, placing their hand on his. He tugged them without warning, pulling them close then flinging them out again, passing them from one hand to the other in a dizzying twirl that had Ajay laughing. He pulled them back up, to him, sidestepping twice before dipping them. A wheezing laugh came out of them, head spinning as they started heaving for breath. 

“Breathless? I have that effect on people,” Elliot grinned cheekily.

They had to shove him away, stumbling to their feet and wheezing, “I have fucking asthma.” While pulling out their emergency inhaler.

Elliot paled. “Oh my God, I’m so sorry!”

They shook their head, waving their hand at him and popping off the mouthpiece of their mask, taking a deep puff of the inhaler, holding and then releasing it as their lungs calmed down. “D-do not worry,” they inhaled the air, fresh and unfiltered, tasting the sweetness of it. “I do not often have attacks anymore, especially with this,” they tapped the tubes attached to their respirator. “It is likely it was mostly the fault of the pollen.”

He nodded, though he was looking at their chin. The necrosis scars, crackling over their face, had faded with the decades but were still rather prominent. Elliot had seen them before-everyone had, it wasn’t like they were going to wear their full get up to get coffee in the morning when everyone knew damn well better than to risk talking to the press or otherwise, but they could see it in his eyes before he spoke it. “Hey, can I ask you a question?”

“Ja.”

“What, I mean,” he gestured at his face, “it’s none of my business but…”

“I inhaled military grade coolant as a young teenager.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Shit, why?”

They snorted. “Because I thought it would be _fun_.”

He blushed, Ajay nudging him teasingly as they got their mouthpiece back on. “N-No I don’t mean – I didn’t meant-mean that! I just-like, how does a kid even, you know I’m gonna stop, I should stop, I’m gonna stop.”

They chuckled slightly. Elliot was always the most fun to get flustered, though Natalie was a close second. The sweetheart, when they’d met, she still a teenager, she realized there wasn’t a non-gendered term in French and had forgotten the English ones in her panic. It had been amusing. “I was hunting a beast that had killed the man who raised me,” they said, hearing the steps of both their squadmates quieten, “in an old IMC facility. It was bigger than three prowlers, strong enough to slatra a half dozen men in minutes. It followed me through the old corridors it had made its lair, and I threw Hrafn,” they patted the tomahawk at their hip, their fingers no longer trembling at the memory as they used to, “against a pipe as guided by the Allfather. The coolant came out, and I scavenged a mask. But before that, I had already inhaled it for, ah, twenty seconds or so. My lungs have healed with time but, well, never fully. The same goes for my scars.”

“Jesus,” Elliot mumbled, “that uh, sounds like, horrifically traumatic.”

“Oh, it was,” they half-turned to address him. “I will not lie on that front. But one must learn from trauma and continue forward; pain is learning, and we can only build better foundations by using the lessons we’ve learned from our pain, and our joy.”

Elliot blinked slowly, glancing around the landscape as they moved, eerily unoccupied for how late in the game they were. They heard him laugh, lightly. “I guess you’re right. Where the hell did you learn that?”

They paused, pulling out the tomahawk and tilting it, watching the ruby of the raven’s eye glint in the sunlight. “From a good man,” they decided, twirling the weapon, “who tried his best.”


End file.
